We assessed the shapes of associations for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease outcomes by calculating study-specific HRs within the predefined groups of baseline alcohol consumption, pooled them by multivariate random-effects meta-analysis, and plotted them against mean usual (and baseline) alcohol consumption within each group. We estimated 95% CIs for each group (including the reference group) that corresponded to the amount of information underlying each group.30, 31 For each major outcome, we determined the best fitting first or second order fractional polynomial32 to describe the association with baseline alcohol consumption (using a 1% significance level as evidence for a second order fractional polynomial over a first order fractional polynomial) using Cox regression models stratified by sex, study, and centre. Further analyses assumed a linear association with alcohol consumption, expressing results per 100 g per week (12·5 units/week) in usual alcohol consumption. To assess the effect of excluding known current drinkers with missing alcohol consumption data, we did a sensitivity analysis using multiple imputation within studies, before combining the data in a meta-analysis. We investigated associations with alcohol type (wine, beer, and
